11. Population

Differing birth rates. For some reason the part of the population of Britain that has been indigenous here over several generations has fewer babies than families that have more newly arrived. I think this is because people are worried about the costs of bringing up children and about the kind of nation and world they will live in as they grow up. Many potential mothers have jobs (and perhaps have to have jobs to pay for housing and household bills) which may make the prospect of having another baby daunting.

Joining the national ethos. We will only have a dynamic society in today’s multi-cultural Britain if we have goals that appeal to all members of our population wherever they come from originally. I think making the world a better place promises to be such a goal and that it can well appeal to people who have come to our shores from needy areas of the world.

If people arriving find us to be a nation of noble aspirations and one that works well together as a team, then they will understand the kind of national ethos that are being asked to join and will be able to feel happy and proud to be joining the teamand to see their children do so too. Without such a motivating, unifying motive and vision in the new host country, new arrivals will fail to find a positive culture to assimilate into and so will continue to live in ghettos of their own emigre societies to the loss of the national community as a whole.

Specialisation of Border Agency Officers. Asylum Applicants should be vetted by officers allowed and encouraged to specialise in making decisions about people claiming to come from a specific geographical area. For instance, decisions on whether to admit an applicant claiming to be been persecuted in China or Cameroon should be made by someone who knows China or Cameroon, someone who, preferably has been there, speaks the language and reads the press from there and follows events there in detail. At present such background information is available by merely reading a few A4 sheets of data which can only give a much poorer understanding that a specialist can achieve.

If someone claims to have been arrested for such and such an activity in such and such a place, the deciding officer should be thoroughly familiar with all the circumstances and thus be able with more confidence to decide whether the story is true or false.

Then our reputation for making intelligent, well informed asylum decisions will be enhanced. We will get more decisions right.

UN protected Enclaves. With the UN we should have the power to shelter asylum applicants in the world regions they claim to be from. So there would be a UN protected enclave in West Africa, South-East Asia and so on and people seeking protection from there could be given international protection in their own area whether they come directly to the enclave or via the UK.

This would honour our ethical obligations whilst discouraging economic migrants. In the enclave, people could have medical care, education and skills training or even university training such that, when conditions improve in their own country they will be ready to return and contribute to life there in a way that becomes more difficult with every passing years spent as, say a surgeon in London or Chicago with access to private practice earnings there and the life style that goes with it. It is very hard and rather rare for someone with professional skills needed in their own poor land to return there rather than remain on a high income in Britain or the West with access to education for one’s children and obstetric care for one’s wife or oneself.